But I didn’t trust myself. My hands were shaking. My jaw ached from clenching. The feelings tangled in my chest were too raw, too sharp, too likely to come out as something I couldn’t take back.
So I walked away.
Back to the carriage house. Back to the silence. Back to the place I’d started thinking of as home—until Marcus showed up and reminded me it wasn’t.
That I was just a friend.
That night, I sat in the dark and let myself look at the truth.
I was in love with her.
Not the comfortable, familiar affection of friendship. Something sharper. Deeper. Something that ached in my bones when I saw her with Marcus, that made my hands shake when I heard him sayour baby, that kept me awake at night replaying the kiss like it was the only good thing I’d ever have.
I didn’t know when it started.
Maybe when I held her hair back in the bathroom and felt her trust in the way she leaned into me. Maybe when I built the crib and imagined a future where I got to stay. Maybe when she kissed me in her grandmother’s kitchen, and I finally understood what I’d been too afraid to name.
Or maybe it had been growing for years. Slow and steady, like roots through stone. Sixteen years of Saturday mornings, of knowing how she took her coffee—too sweet for me—her laugh, the way her face changed when she talked about Gran. Sixteenyears of showing up, and somewhere along the way, showing up had become something else entirely.
I didn’t mean for this to happen.
I didn’t want to want her.
I thought about Sarah. About the night she’d sat on my couch and told me I was too safe. Too predictable. That she couldn’t remember the last time I’d surprised her.
I’d spent months thinking that was the problem. That I’d made myself too easy to have, too convenient to keep. That being needed wasn’t the same as being wanted, and I kept confusing the two.
But sitting here now, watching Marcus walk back into Grace’s life, I finally understood.
Sarah wanted me to be different. She’d looked at who I was—steady and reliable and always there—and wished I were something else. Someone who kept her guessing. Someone who made her chase.
Grace saw me exactly as I was.
She knew I’d show up every Saturday. Knew I’d build nurseries without being asked and remember the color of her grandmother’s kitchen and sit on bathroom floors while she fell apart. She knew all of it—every predictable, reliable, boring thing about me.
And she’d kissed me anyway.
That was the difference. That was everything.
It didn’t change my situation. I was still in love with my best friend while the father of her baby slept in her guest room, trying to reclaim a family he’d walked away from. I still had no right to want what I wanted, no claim to make, no move that wouldn’t look like jealousy dressed up as concern.
But at least I understood now.
I wasn’t too much. I wasn’t too safe, too steady, too easy to leave.
I was just in love with the wrong person at the wrong time.
Or maybe the right person—and the timing was the only thing that was wrong.
I stared at the ceiling until the first gray light of dawn crept through the dormer windows.
In the main house, Grace was probably awake. Probably making tea, moving through the kitchen, I knew as well as my own heartbeat.
I loved her.
Past tense didn’t work anymore.Loved, like it was finished. Like it was something I could put down and walk away from.
I love her.
